‘Muslim antisemitism’ and Al-Andalus: a historical perspective

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Islamophobia, Judaism


Image of a cantor reading the Passover story in Al Andalus, from the 14th century Haggadah of Barcelona.

by Ed Swan, Research Intern, Quilliam Foundation

The phenomenon of antisemitism in Muslim-majority societies is usually explained in one of two ways. Either it is seen as something innate to Islam, constituting a core element of Islamic thought and scripture, and exemplified by centuries of persecution and conflict, or it is presented as a reaction to Zionism, and a break with a history of interfaith cooperation. The debate is influenced by absolutist viewpoints, which hold, for example, that the reaction to Israel in the Islamic world is purely antisemitic, or that pre-Zionist relations between Jews and Muslims constituted a utopian ideal of coexistence. The Islamic Caliphate of Al-Andalus, which existed in various forms in Iberia from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is often held up as the example par excellence of this coexistence. A closer look at the society of Al-Andalus helps to demonstrate that, while perhaps it was no utopia, the phenomenon of ‘Muslim antisemitism’ as we recognise it today does not have its roots in Islamic history.

Antisemitism in Muslim majority countries is well documented: a recent survey reports that large majorities of respondents in countries such as Egypt (95%), Turkey (76%) and Pakistan (76%) have an ‘unfavourable opinion of Jews’ (Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, 2008). Focusing specifically on the Arab World, where the largest majorities reported unfavourable opinions, there are a number of examples in local media that demonstrate the form of this antisemitism. European narratives play a prominent role, for example, Mein Kampf and the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion continue to this day to be widely published and distributed in Arabic translation, and the latter formed the basis of a 2002 Egyptian television series syndicated across the Arab World.

These European-inspired antisemitic ideas can be seen employed as a response to the two overwhelming perceived threats to Islam: Western imperialism and Zionism. Continue reading ‘Muslim antisemitism’ and Al-Andalus: a historical perspective →

Going for Broke (Read “Provoke”)

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Terrorism Issue

Given the events of last week in Egypt, it is hard not to reflect on these events while they are fresh. Opinions on the military crackdown, which has resulted in hundreds of innocent (obviously people protesting but not carrying weapons, including women) victims, are deeply divided. There seems to be no middle ground in the media or on the street, as far as one can see from outside the conflict area. One reason for this impasse is the level of violence attached to the level of vitriolic rhetoric from both sides. The removal of Morsi was bound to stir up the wrath of those who fervently supported the Muslim Brotherhood as all hopes for gaining power through the ballot box were shattered. The call for protests was doomed to failure as long as the military and security forces were intent on maintaining control of Egypt’s economy and protecting their base of power. In part this is due to the fact that the military never lost power and was clearly not prepared to do so, even with the changing of the guard in the officer shuffle at the top. But it is also the case that the Muslim Brotherhood had many enemies from the start, especially among those who were more secular-minded.

In a New York Times commentary Rick Gladstone quotes several scholars who argue that the aim of the military in forcefully removing the protesters with live ammunition was to provoke the expected violence by members of the Brotherhood. During the past month Egyptians have been bombarded with a propaganda message that the Brotherhood has become a bunch of bearded terrorists who must be resisted. So the strategy by Sisi and the military/security complex appears to have been to provoke violence from the protesters, knowing full well that there would be a violent reaction. The stores of a few weapons that the military claims was found among the protesters, even if planted there by the military, reinforces this scenario. The gut reaction of some supporters to blame the Copts and burn down more than 30 churches again feeds into the message that the Muslim Brotherhood is too radical. Continue reading Going for Broke (Read “Provoke”) →

The Tragedy that is Egypt today

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Egypt is once again under military curfew. Mubarak is gone, but the military and security system that stabilized the Mubarak regime is undeniably in control, no matter what the rhetoric about restoring democracy. The brief flirtation with a seemingly democratic election has been an abject failure, no matter who you think is to blame. There are no winners in the recent protests and crackdown that left well over 500 people dead and several thousand wounded. At this point all Egyptians are on the losing side as violence escalates. The situation today is a tragedy and is bound to get more tragic in the days ahead. Egyptians are pitted against each other in sectarian clashes, Muslim against fellow Muslim and some Muslims targeting the Copts. As many as 20 Coptic churches may already have been torched. God forbid if Egypt still had a viable Jewish population.

Blame is being hurled against all sides with breakneck speed in blogs, commentaries and twitter. But blaming is part of the problem, since it further inflames the frustration that leads to violence. Coptic churches are being burned because the Copts are said to side with the military as though it is only about politics. But the ugly intolerance that many Salafis and Muslim Brothers have preached to their own transcends politics. The military is indeed ruthless and manipulating the media with propaganda, demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. Enough Brothers are acting out their violence to lend some credence to the claims in the eyes of many Egyptians. There is also the atrocity of pushing for martyrdom, as leaders of the Brotherhood encourage those who are protesting Morsi’s ouster to engage the military in what can only be a losing and bloody battle. Both sides are acting like spoiled children; no one is promoting a peaceful mediation, if one is still possible. Continue reading The Tragedy that is Egypt today →

Egypt Erupts

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Teaching Resources


I have been reading a number of Mamluk historians recently and the turn of events in Egypt since the removal of President Morsi is an eerie reminder that the history of Egypt is more than the Nile, as Herodotus once put it; Egypt is the home of coup after coup from the Pharaohs to the Greeks to the early Muslims who founded Cairo to Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottomans, Napoleon, the British and Nasser. The Nile still flows and the blood still spills out in the ongoing history of civil strife. The history of Egypt beyond the pyramids that the tourists photograph is very much about the military.

Today the Egyptian military and security forces followed through on their warning that they would clear the Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo. The rhetoric for the past month has literally gone ballistic. The government has painted the Brotherhood as a band of intolerant terrorists, while the Brotherhood has made it seem as though they are martyrs for democracy. In all of this there must be some who wish for the days of Mubarak, just as some Iraqis long for the relative security of Saddam Hussein. The Arab Spring, which brought down dictator after dictator, has sprung a leak and a steady flow of blood is oozing out, literally hemorrhaging in the case of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Egypt.

Reports this morning from both sides in the conflict stretch the meaning of hyperbole. The government claims only 16 or so dead in all of Egypt, while a spokesman for the Brotherhood said thousands have been killed and tens of thousands injured. The truth is quite obviously in between. Continue reading Egypt Erupts →

Airing out on Area Studies: Confessions of a Middle East Area Specialist

Anthropology/Sociology, Orientalism, Yemen

[These remarks were written on the train back to New York after the 1997 AAA meetings in Washington. I had earlier provided extemporaneous remarks on the subject at the business meeting of the Middle East Section. I found these in a set of old files and decided such a confession is timeless, at least in my case. And this year I will again be presenting papers at both AAA and MESA. ]

The idea of “Area Studies,” especially those areas where several centuries of Western colonialism have helped define the modern boundaries, is under attack. One of the more besieged areas is the Middle East, once the Near East and part of the politically uncorrected Orient as such. I am not particularly interested in defending Area Studies as such. But I am dismayed at the weakening of Middle East Studies programs at major universities. As an anthropologist who encourages other anthropologists to work in the Middle East, I appreciate the teaching of Middle Eastern languages, literature, culture, history, politics, economics, etc. as potentially useful information for ethnography. I do not know how trying to learn “too much” about the region could distort one’s anthropologizing.

Each fall I have a major decision to make: should I go to AAA or MESA? Continue reading Airing out on Area Studies: Confessions of a Middle East Area Specialist →

Humans without Gods

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Judaism


Theobald von Oer, The Weimar Court of the Muses (1860)

by Anouar Majid. Tingis Redux, August 7, 2013

For many years now, I have shared my utter amazement at how human beings living in the 20th and 21st centuries could still believe that the gods of the Bible and the Koran are as real as the computer or mobile device in their hand, the cars they drive, or the many people, animals, or trees they see and touch. When I ask people if God exists, many say yes. But when I ask them how they got to know Him (God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is unmistakably male), they quote their holy books as evidence. I have yet to meet someone who had a direct encounter with God; our knowledge of the Almighty relies heavily on our faith that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed had exclusive access to Him, and that the books that tell us about these privileged encounters are the uncorrupted truth.

Most of us have been indoctrinated into such beliefs since childhood, so that by the time we start defending God against unbelievers, the best we can do is rationalize the faiths we inherited from our parents, families, and social environments. Take away the holy books and the theologians that have spent millennia preaching their dogmas and we are left with only our mere existences, alone with the elements, without any guide to show us how to make sense of our lives. This is, in fact, how the world was in ancient Greece before Christianity took over and condemned philosophy to perdition. And this is the world that the British philosopher A. C. Grayling wants us to rediscover in his newly published book, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism (2013).

Grayling doesn’t talk about the role of writing and scripture in the making of religions; he is more interested in making a humanist case against the basic assumptions of the three monotheistic religions. (Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism, for example, are better understood as philosophies, not religions in the sense Westerners understand the term.) Such religions, a “hangover from the infancy of modern humanity,” a collection of “superstitions of illiterate herdsmen living several thousands of years ago,” expressions of the “pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our ancestors,” and a relic of the distant unlettered past are “essentially a stone-age outlook in the modern world.” It would be as if today’s governments still depended on the power of astrology and magic to govern people and run their affairs. This survival, needless to say, is astonishing in an age when science has made great strides—but, then again, science has yet to make a significant impact on many parts of the world, including the Islamic one. Continue reading Humans without Gods →